Magic: The Gathering - Commander Variants - Pauper and Tiny Leaders

Commander is one of the most popular casual formats of Magic the Gathering, and its community-developed origin encourages people to try changing its basic formula to develop new variants using its core structure. Two of those formats that have gained a fairly wide level of player support are Pauper and Tiny Leaders.

Pauper Commander

Pauper Memorial, image via Wikimedia Commons. Source

The idea of Pauper decks began as a variation of Modern Magic where decks could only be constructed using cards of the "common" rarity. If a card was ever printed as a common, it could be used - even if your copy was from an edition where it was printed as another rarity. Pauper Commander applies that principle to the Commander rules, with the deck only consisting of common-rarity cards except for the commander, which can be any common or uncommon creature.

Pauper is popular partly because anyone with even a modest collection of cards can build a deck. Even if there is a particular card needs to be purchased to fill a slot in the deck list, it probably only costs a few cents at your local game shop, a few points at an online trading site like Pucatrade, or a simple common-for-common swap with another player. It's also popular because the much wider variety of uncommon creature cards with interesting abilities means that Pauper Commander decks can play very differently from standard Commander decks. If your local gaming group is starting to feel a bit stale, suggest this as a variant and see how it goes.

Tiny Leaders

Louis XIII, child king of France, image via Wikimedia Commons. Source

While Pauper decks are restricted by rarity, Tiny Leaders decks are restricted by the converted mana cost (CMC) of the cards in the deck. The casting cost of any card in the deck cannot exceed a total of 3 colored and generic mana combined. Tiny Leaders decks are also different in that the deck contains only 50 cards, life total starts at 25 rather than 40, and there is no special commander damage win condition.

Pauper decks offer a faster game experience, and a lot of the powerful cards from standard EDH are unavailable. Like Pauper, Tiny Leaders can require thinking outside the box to find new strategies. Unlike Pauper, a Tiny Leaders deck can be culled from a standard 100-card Commander deck if you already use a general with a CMC of 3 or less, or have another Legendary Creature in the 99 who meets that standard. This makes the format easy to try if you already have a Commander deck, even if you need to buy or trade for a general to lead it.

One example is inside the deck mentioned in a previous post using Daxos of Meletis and most of the low-CMC cards to create deck for this alternative format without having to get extra cards and sleeves. I have played Tiny Leaders games using this subset of that deck, and it was a lot of fun.

Final Thoughts
Don't forget to follow the links to the rules pages for these formats. There are probably several important details I left out in this brief description that you will need to know, and they each have different ban lists that need to be considered before building a deck. As always, don't be afraid to experiment, and don't forget to have fun!